Around the World in 80 Days at the Royal Exchange, Manchester

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They say that travel broadens the mind — and that’s certainly true for Phileas Fogg. Starchy, detached and pernickety, he’s a curious kind of hero. Within the first few minutes of Laura Eason’s adaptation of the Jules Verne yarn he’s sacked a servant because his morning tea is a few degrees below the required temperature. And though there’s a dash of panache in taking a potentially ruinous bet on the completion of his 80-day global circumnavigation, he’s more interested in the minutiae of train timetables and steamer crossings than in the people and places he will see. Yet in Theresa Heskins’s